


never look back

by Wallyallens



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, RipFic, the rest of the team are mentioned in passing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-26 23:56:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12569052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wallyallens/pseuds/Wallyallens
Summary: prompt: "we can just fly away and never look back" aka I take the quote that hurts my soul from killjoys and apply it to timecanary.





	never look back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [minachandler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/minachandler/gifts).



> all rights to the quote "we can just fly away and never look back" goes to killjoys, which y'all should also be watching bc it's amazing

Sara catches him as he is leaving.

It was something Rip had been hoping to avoid, preferably forever. They had already said goodbye too many times.

“Hey, you going on a trip?”

His plan had been to leave the ship quietly and leave no more devastation in his wake. It was clear to him now that they no longer needed him, no matter how much he might feel the opposite; he had packed a bag and was on his way out when her voice stops him short, and Rip feels his heart sink. Things had just become ten times harder. Walking away from Sara Lance was never easy. Now, the bag on his back becomes an anchor, as he turns back to face her.

Rip’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of her striding towards him, and he fumbles his words in response, “Er, _yes_ , in fact.”

Sara’s head lifts an inch. “I was joking.”

“Right, well – we both know that I don’t have a sense of humour at times. But ah, yes, I am . . . taking my leave.”

He chooses the words carefully, determined not to say goodbye. He _can’t_ ; not again. Sara doesn’t seem to notice that each word is making it all the harder for him to go; each second with her testing his resolve. In fact, she steps closer and it’s like gravity – she pulls him in, she keeps him close, and Rip finds his body mimicking hers, learning towards her. Rip has to drop his gaze, otherwise he knows he will never have the strength to walk away.

“What do you mean, ‘ _leave_ ’?”

“This team has functioned far better in my absence than it ever did under my leadership. You-” his hand moves with the words, and he hesitates for a split second. _You saved me. You changed everything_. In the end, he loses his nerve and finishes, “saved reality itself.”

“Well you were there too-”

“Yes, but I’ve realised there’s nothing further for me to teach you.” Rip shrugs, a little helplessly. He holds her gaze and tries hard to swallow, adding quietly, “Any of you.”

Sara’s wide eyes betray hurt for a heartbeat. “So what? You’re just gonna walk out of here without saying goodbye?”

It’s too hard to face, so he plays it off as a joke. “Well, I was going to borrow the jump-ship actually.”

Sara gives him the reprieve, an edge of a smile appearing on her face: “I think Mick would call that stealing.”

Rip can’t help but laugh, “I think Mr. Rory has had somewhat of an effect on me.”

He doesn’t look her in the eyes as he says it. _And so have you_ goes unspoken, but it echoes as loud as thunder in the empty corridor, reverberating through this place that was his home once. It had been with Miranda and Jonas, and then again with her – because Sara had brought laughter back into the halls when they had fallen silent, flooded light in through doors he left closed, and brought him back to life when all he had wanted to do was die. She had made him better. He hoped it went both ways; and from the way she grew into herself as a leader, the way she smiled easily now and sat the captain’s chair like she was born to it – he suspected it did.

Rip hopes that she knows what she did for him. But he had never been able to find the words to tell her how he felt, and now he found he no longer had a place here – in these hallways, they had become friends, that much was true – but in these hallways he had also stalked his team-mates and had his mind torn apart.

In this ship, he had killed her.

Rip still doesn’t know what to do with that, and needs the time to work it out. Somewhere in her eyes, her lips softly curving upwards into a smile tinged with sadness, Sara understands. She nods.

“And you on me, Captain.”

“I’m no longer the Captain,” Rip tells her, leaning forwards. _Gravity_. As long as Sara is smiling, he cannot help but try to match it, feigning like his heart wasn’t aching inside his hollow chest. “You are. Unless-”

If he doesn’t stop now, he’s going to slip up and tell her the truth that so longs so escape his treacherous lips, so Rip straightens and steps away. Not today. Someday, maybe. But this was not the right time to tell Sara Lance that he loved her – they were a tragedy of being in the right place at not quite the right time, together yet separate, and he’d call them star-crossed, but the stars had never been anything but home to him. Now, he supposed they were to her, too. As long as that remained true – one day their timing would be right, and he’d meet her there.

She pushes, eyebrows drawn together, “Unless _what_ , Rip?”

It was the dance they did: come together, fall apart, never quite meet in the middle. But Rip had lost enough that to be anything but honest felt like a loss, so he took the leap and let his heart move his tongue.

“Unless you want to come with me,” he says, stepping towards her. In the lights of the Waverider, her blue eyes shine, and widen at the words, but he persists. “After everything that’s happened, everything we have lost – both of us – we don’t owe the world a thing. We don’t have to stay here, Sara. We could just . . . fly away. Never look back.”

Sara’s mouth falls open, but no words find their way past her parted lips. She simply stares at him with the entire sky in her eyes, and he cannot look away, heart in his mouth hammering in shock that he had found the nerve to ask her. It is out there now, and what is said cannot be unsaid. There’s a moment when he thinks that she will say yes. Then something dawns in her eyes, and he sees the answer there before she ever speaks a word.

“Rip. I can’t-”

“You don’t have to explain,” he says quickly, leaning away. “It’s okay, Sara. I understand. It was – a moment of weakness. I shouldn’t have said anything, forgive me-”

Rip turns quickly, dropping his gaze and all but running away. Footsteps follow, and a hand on his arm stops him.

“ _No_ ,” she says firmly, closing the distance once again. Sara’s hand on his arm is heavy, her fingertips squeezing ever so slightly. “Don’t – don’t be sorry. I just can’t, not right now. They need me.”

 _So do I_ , Rip almost says, but bites his tongue. He forces himself to nod instead, and means it when he replies, “I know.”

“It’s just not the right time,” Sara says, and there’s something in her eyes that he cannot put a name to. “Not right now, after everything. I have to stay. But – I’m not sorry that you asked, Rip. I’m not saying not ever,” she swallows, hard, and she’s so close he feels her breath on his cheek, “just not today.”

“Someday,” Rip says quietly, half of a sad smile working its way onto his lips. He doesn’t mean for her to hear, but Sara squeezes his arm tight and in the spur of a moment in which her eyes dance with fire, she surges towards him and plants her lips against his cheek.

When she leans back, her cheeks are flush and she echoes back. “Someday.”

It’s not much, but it’s enough that Rip can walk away with hope. So he nods softly, and steps away.

“In that spirit,” Rip says instead, feeling the certainty that this was the right decision flood his chest, “Permission to depart, Captain Lance?”

“Permission granted.”

Dimples appear on her cheeks, black holes amid the constellations of her freckles, as she smiles back. Sara offers him a hand, and Rip’s face freezes for a heartbeat before he takes it, unsure if he would ever be able to let go if he took her hand. When he does, her palm fits perfectly within his own.

“Stay out of trouble,” Sara says as he shakes it, and despite himself, Rip can’t help but feel the edges of his lips quirk up.

“What? Without you lot?” he jokes, doing his best to let this parting at least be a good one. “I think that will actually be quite easy.”

Rip turns to walk away. _Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t look back. If you look back, you’re lost._

He doesn’t.

Rip misses Sara’s smile as he leaves, knowing that this is not goodbye: she will see him again.

*

When he does see her again, he breaks her heart, and Rip isn’t sure where things went wrong.

This is followed by six months of trying not to see her and his feet walking him up to her door before he chickens out and walks away, each time thinking back to that day on the Waverider. _Someday_ seems further and further away with each time. And then Sara is in his office shouting, pushing back, stealing his ship – and a part of him is relieved. Even if she was angry at him now, the lines of her face cast in hurt scarred onto his retinas like a flash after lightning, there is never an occasion where he is able to equate seeing Sara Lance as a bad thing.

So they fight, and fall out of step with one another, and it ends with the Legends and the Time Bureau at odds until a fight brings them together. Somehow, when it comes down to it, they all bleed together. He supposes that’s what family means. Rip finds himself standing between Ava and Sara, the Legends at his side, the Time Bureau at his back, and realises that this was how it should have been all along.

It ends with both teams scattered across the Waverider, drinks in hands, chatting and laughing with fresh bruises on their skin but smiles on their faces all the same. Looking at them, he realises where he had gone wrong, and it hurts so much to think he might have lost them that Rip does what he always does, and runs away when it gets harder still to breathe.

He escapes the party and is sitting in the jump-ship when she finds him, watching the time stream pass by in hues of blue as if they were sailing on an open ocean. It is quiet, and peaceful; although he tenses when he hears footsteps coming, Rip cannot help but relax as Sara takes the seat beside him in silence, handing him a drink and putting her feet up onto the console. She seems so utterly at home that he fights a smile, holding up his drink in thanks.

For the longest time, they sit in silence as the universe flies by.

Then, he speaks: “I’m sorry, you know.”

“For what?” she asks, tilting her head towards him. Sara’s eyebrows knit themselves together, and he knows it’s on purpose – Sara was hard to read unless she chose to be, but showed her true self to him on occasion.

Rip waves a hand, “Everything. The Bureau, taking the ship . . . I understand now where I went wrong. I still believe that the Bureau is the right thing, but I was still wrong to send you home. It should always have been both. I just thought . . .” He sighs, deflating as he sipped his drink, feeling drained, “Ah, it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Maybe not,” Sara agrees, peering at him from the corner of her eyes, “I’d still like to hear it, though.”

With a defeated sort of sound, Rip takes a larger swig of his drink to steady himself before he replies.

“I misjudged your dedication to this endeavour, Miss Lance. I misjudged all of you, I just thought – I never saw it as _taking_ something from you, but as giving back your lives to you. I had recruited you, but I had also taken you away from your lives and your families, and I just thought – I thought that one day soon, you would want to leave. And I wanted you to be able to do that knowing that the timeline was safe, and so I made the Time Bureau so that you did not have to stay here.”

“But you never asked us if that was what we wanted,” Sara says quietly. There’s a hint of judgement in her tone, but no heat; no anger. “You never asked us to stay.”

“I know, I know,” Rip replies, holding up his hand in acknowledgement, although he drops her gaze. “I just – I thought you would want to leave eventually, and I was preparing for that. I guess in the end I rushed it because-”

“Because?” Sara leans even closer towards him. “Rip, please.”

“Because I thought it would hurt less if our parting was sooner rather than later.”

A small frown appears on Sara’s face. She turns to him more fully, asking with a tilt of her head. “Like ripping off a band-aid?”

Rip snorts dryly, “Exactly so.”

Sara leans back in her seat, humming unhappily for a moment. “All this time, you let us believe that this was because you didn’t need us.”

“Quite the opposite, Miss Lance,” Rip admits, and his heart didn’t break as much as it was slowly chipped away, eroded by the relentless passage of time and space between them. “I needed you too much.”

“But what about you?”

“I don’t understand.”

“You say this was all so we could go home, right? So we didn’t have to do this forever?” she asks, and he nods slightly, not quite following. But there are lines at the corners of Sara’s eyebrows and so he knows this is important somehow, so he listens hard when she speaks. “What about you? If you created the Time Bureau with you running it, when do you get to stop?”

“I don’t,” Rip replies, face falling as he realised her meaning. It was a simple answer for him, and he finds himself smiling, even if it was self-deprecatingly, “This is who I am, Sara. All I am. I don’t think I can stop – I don’t know how. Better or worse: this is my life.”

Sara looks angry for a second, frown deepening before she turns to him.

“And you didn’t think it was mine?”

“I-” Rip fumbles, “- you have your family, and friends back in star city. I don’t have that, not anywhere, I just assumed – you’d want to go back to them.”

“Rip,” she says seriously, and there’s a drunken sort of honesty in her eyes that speaks more than her words do. “I’ve lost my sister. I’ve died and come back to life, but I’ve also killed a lot of people in the process – I don’t get to stop, either. I thought you understood that. That – that even if this was how I earn redemption, at least I wouldn’t be doing it alone.”

“Redemption? Sara, you have saved the world – saved _all of time_. If anybody has earned redemption for their sins, it is you.”

“If only if were that easy,” she laughs humourlessly. As she swipes a hand over glassy eyes, Sara shakes her head and looks back at him, “You’re right, in a way. All the others – they’ll stop, one day. They’ll go home and find new lives. But not you, and not-” she hesitates; takes a breath, “-and not me.”

Rip stares at her for a moment. Sara has tears in her eyes, although she fights them back, and still she finds a way to look so resilient and bear her teeth at the universe in the form of a smile. She’s so beautiful. It hurts to look at her; he has missed her so much in the past five years. Somewhere in those eyes, so full of defiance and yet shattered, he thinks there is a reflection of himself.

In the end, all he can think to say is “I’m sorry.”

Sara smiles tiredly, and nods, and replies. “Me too.”

He taps their almost-empty glasses together, and they sit side by side for a while longer, eyes turning back to the blue of the time stream. Sara puts her feet back on the dash, and where their hands hang in midair over their seats, their fingers brush. Rip thinks that this could be enough for him, forever: the open sky and a drink and someone riding shotgun who knows him down to the colour of his blood, and the shape of his fears, and smiling through tears.

“One day,” he says, barely more than a whisper, “one day things will be better, and even if the rest of the team leave – as long as you need it, this ship is your home, Sara. I will never try to take that from you again. And on that day, when they leave-” he bites the side of his cheek and takes the plunge, “on that day, if you want to keep fighting, try to wash some of the blood of both of our hands? I will fight at your side, if you’ll have me. And if you want to leave all this behind, run to some . . . quiet part of the time stream, away from all of this, where there’s no need for blood or pain, if you – if you want to see if peace is possible for people like us, then I will follow you there, too.”

Rip went on to echo words that had been said five years ago for him; only months for her.

“We wouldn’t have to stay here. We could just fly away and never look back.”

Sara looks at him with a bittersweet smile and tears in her eyes. “One day I’m going to take you up on that offer, you know.”

And Rip feels his lips work into the same expression as he says, “Someday.”

“Yeah,” she replies, getting to her feet. Sara pauses beside him as she is leaving, placing a hand on his shoulder, and Rip leans ever so slightly into the touch. Just the warmth of her fingertips is like the moment the dawn breaks; the second the sunlight breaches its grave in the earth. It explodes, filling him with light – in a second it is gone, as she leaves with the word, echoed back to him through infinity. “Someday.”

It sounds like a promise.

*

It doesn’t end all at once – things rarely are so simple, or so abrupt. Things slow to a stop for the Legends; the ship gets emptier, the ship gets fuller – and she stays. So does Rip. He isn’t always a part of the team, working with the Bureau still, but now they work together often, and if she ever needs him – Sara knows that he will come.

It begins to fall apart when Stein dies on a mission, and Jax goes home. He needs to be with his mom, he says, promising he will be back one day. At the time, he means it. But then he falls in love, and becomes a hero with his own team, and the rest of the team’s hearts are fit to burst with pride when they see him on the news. It turned out that in the end, he had a bigger future than anybody expected, and was remembered long in the minds of men as one of the greatest heroes of the age.

Next, Amaya returns to 1942 – and Nate joins her. The time stream doesn’t fall apart, and Mari is still there in the future, so maybe just this once, time is on their side. They get married in 1945 and spend the rest of their days together in Zambesi, until Nate is old and grey with laughter lines and Amaya passes down her totem to their daughter. The people of the village tell stories for many years of the two heroes – but mostly what is said of them is that they were happy.

Ray was always supposed to be a hero, with a heart that big – but he was also destined to love deeply with it. He and Kendra drift back together, and then apart. Often he finds himself falling, but never landing in love, until one day he finds himself falling for Carter, too. When he gets married to them both, he chooses to stay in 2017 and see what the future holds for him there. He still might not make a huge dent in history, but he finds himself less concerned with that now – he was in love, and loved, and that was enough.

Zari stays longer than anyone expected, working herself a place on the ship and in their family. She grows with them. She learns to trust, and to control her totem, and thrives in a world that is kinder to her. Finding that there is nothing for her to go back to in her time, she chooses to stay in 2017 years after joining the team; there, she uses her knowledge of technology to help and creates the first pro-meta human movement. She is remembered as a defender of meta-human rights, a hero to them; it doesn’t bring her brother back, but she saves the future that had made her so hard at first.

Mick stays longer still. He is never really committed to the fight, but to the people – he stays as long as he is needed, but when the Waverider grows empty, he stops Sara one day and tells her that it’s time. He retires to Aruba and tells her to forgive herself, and see if she can be happy. Sara tells him to do the same. In the end, he is one of her oldest friends. It’s said he spent the rest of his days on a beach with a drink, and his last words were of seeing his partner again.

The Waverider empties, until one day Sara arrives at the Time Bureau alone. One look, and Rip knows that it is time. He grabs a bag that has been packed for years and passes over his command to Ava – and Gary. _It’s all well and good to be logical,_ he tells them, with eyes on Sara, _but sometimes you need heart, as well_. She laughs and Gary just about faints and Rip knows that time is in good hands.

Then he turns and walks with her onto the Waverider.

“They’re all gone,” Rip says, asking without asking. They’re standing in the control room, just drifting in the time stream. The two of them had spoken little before they left; this plan having been a long time waiting in the wings. Sara just nods, and he crosses the room to stand beside her, finding her looking up at the blue. Rip, on the other hand, cannot take his eyes off her. “Were they happy? In the end?”

It was just the right thing to ask – the sadness is staved off Sara’s face by a nostalgic smile, coloured with pride as she nods.

“Yeah,” she tells him, finding that smile made of sunlight, even with her eyes in the stars, “Yeah, they were.”

“I’m pleased.”

“And you?” Sara asks, glancing at him from the corner of her eyes. “Are you happy?”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

Sara laughs and calls him a smooth bastard, smacking him on the arm as he tries to suppress a giggle. They laugh gently for a moment, time standing still above them. It’s been many years since Rip had recruited her to a team with a half-baked plan to save the world. They’d had some victories and many losses, and laughed and cried and died together. It seemed right that in the end, it would be the two of them.

Slowly, Rip places a comforting hand on her back, and Sara’s eyes flick up to him, “I know you’ll miss them. But my offer still stands – wherever, whenever. I’m by your side.”

Sara smiles slowly, softly. It grows on her face as she turns to face him, and when she speaks, there’s warmth in her tone. “Say it.”

Rip doesn’t need to ask what.

“If you want to fight, I’ve got your back. If you want to run, I call shotgun. We don’t have to stay here. We can just fly away and never come back.”

“Yes we can,” she grins, all sadness erased, and places her hands on his collar. “I promised you, didn’t I? Someday. _Today_.”

Rip finds himself unable to speak aside from choking out a laugh, and finds that words aren’t needed a second later when Sara’s grip on his collar tightens, pulling him forward and pressing her lips to his.

 _Finally_.


End file.
